Politicians constantly talk about stopping the illegal immigrants that are coming from Mexico, but putting a wall has never and will never be a solution since the reason why so many displaced keep coming across the border is mostly to escape the crime, corruption, inequality, and violence of they have to live in their home countries. The worst part is that most of these terrible things is that happen in third world countries are rooted in constant subversion by developed countries, primarily the US. I feel like since we caused this (even if in part) we should help stop it now, even if we didn’t publicly admit guilt to save face.
So, how do we do it? Do we straight up invade Mexico and go on a full out war against the cartels like we did against Osama Bin Laden?
If not, why not? And, is there anything that can be done?
I would like to keep things civil. Please, let’s keep this respectful as I know this is a tough issue and there is anger on both sides of this issue.
Legalize all the drugs. Stop providing them a market.
Just a reminder that, while drugs are the cartels’ biggest income, it’s not the only one. They’ll just move onto produce and other goods like avocados and lemons. This was news years ago but I’m not at the computer to link.
For that it would help to properly design and enforce laws against tax evasion, money laundering and criminal financing. But i am afraid the rich around the world would rather have another world war than pay fair taxes and be barred from doing business with murderers.
I like how you use the word ‘rich’ instead of ‘cartel’ as if there were a useful distinction between them. They differ only on the scale of how openly they embrace violence as a solution.
Good. Let them justify their private armies to the accountants when police protection for legal operations is free.
You say that as if illegal operations is a valid justification (to the law) for having a private army.
Yeah, that’s why they do end up legitimizing after some time for some of these reasons. lol So maybe it’s a good thing in the grand scheme of things, even if it’s kind of shitty for the people who played fair to get to where the others got for free.
Including stuff like fentanyl and tranq and allow anybody to buy it?
Yes. The same as alcohol.
No. Regulate and offer known recreational drugs pure.
Very few people take fentanyl on its own or intentionally. Even tranq (which I hadn’t heard of but just looked up) is primarily harmful because it’s often tainted with fentanyl or other potent yet potentially fatal additives. Fentanyl does not need to be legally sold, because there is no real market for it.
Hell, even fucking weed is tainted, primarily with silica-based desccants, in countries where it’s still illegal (*cough* UK *cough*).
However if people could get pure, laboratory tested recreational drugs then these issues could disappear overnight. Heroin is bad when you fall deep into addiction, but most heroin users wouldn’t get into that state if they could take the drug legally without taboo or victimisation of illicit dealers. 100 years ago opium dens were a thing, and there were some people deep in the poppy - but there were also people just as deep in their alcohol suffering worse. Alcohol is less of a problem today, and back in the 90s there was a study funded by DARE (and subsequently unpublished because they didn’t like the results) that determined most heroin users were in fact business men and women earning large salaries with enough income to support their habit with high quality product.
Just like digital piracy is a service problem, drug addiction is a societal mental health problem, and criminalising it only allows the problem to fester to extremes.
Decriminalise possession, keep supply of the most fatally harmful drugs illegal, legitimise and tax known recreational drugs.
I’d argue to legalize everything including the extremes and price the extremes to barely undercut and drive out any illicit market. It is always better to have control over a legitimate market than it is to have a black market. There is no way to regulate demand and creating market choke points is totally ineffective. So use state run capitalism to make the market uncompetitive and drive out any competition to gain full control. The State as the dealer makes more sense than the State playing wack-a-mole in the middle.
I dunno, I think it’s more complicated than that. First off, there are some things that should be prohibited - it’s illegal to privately own nuclear weapons, for the most extreme example. Second, many of these truly harmful drugs have tiny markets, and these markets are in fact propped up by other, more conventional drugs being illegal. If heroin were legal, very few if any people would even consider fentanyl, such that fentanyl could be prohibited entirely without having an out of control illegal market.
In some sense, though, we do already have a controlled legitimate market for these prohibited things. Even cannabis, even during the prohibition, had some legal purchase avenues for the purpose of research. Even nuclear, that’s manufactured by private businesses with permission from the government. That works for the vast majority of drugs, it only fails with popular, relatively low harm recreational drugs where the law just isn’t reasonable against the potential harm.
But if you legalise all drugs, as you say, no one will want to use shit like fent at all. Fent was legal for decades, it’s older than most opioids. It wasn’t an issue until the crackdown on pills.
I think possession of any drug should be legal. However, the intent behind its use can still be illegal. If you have fentanyl and can demonstrate you only have it for some genuine use, and aren’t looking to cause harm with it, then that shouldn’t be a problem. Supplying fentanyl is much more likely to be a harmful circumstance, and its supply should be controlled.
Imo spending the effort to educate people instead of cracking down on sellers or producers makes much more sense.
In a world with clean accessible morphine, no drug user will seek our fentanyl, no matter how easy it is to find.
No one wants that crap. When I did drugs I wanted pain pills but they kept cracking down, so here we are with worse stuff.
They would rather the addicts all die from Fentanyl laced bullshit than do that. They make way too much money with it being illegal
Maybe instead of invading the US should stop arming cartels? https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/02/stopping-toxic-flow-of-gun-traffic-from-u-s-to-mexico/
Maybe the US and their DEA should stop funding and working with cartels https://world.time.com/2014/01/14/dea-boosted-mexican-drug-cartel/
https://jacobin.com/2023/03/us-mexico-war-on-drugs-garcia-luna-calderon
Maybe the US should stop israel from selling tools like pegasus which are used to hack and attack journalists https://web.archive.org/web/20240116033152/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/world/americas/pegasus-spyware-mexico.html
Or maybe the US should stop doing coups across latin america and putting dictators in power (too many to link)
But but but muh free market
“Hey, I’d like to buy some drugs”
“NO! NO FREE MARKET FOR YOU!!”
This is a very simple take that fails to capture any of the nuance or depth that these stories require for context. It’s rage bait.
First link: contains the allegation by Mexico that the US is largely responsible for flow of illegal guns across the border. Case dismissed by federal court.
Second link: cited an investigation by a local Mexican newspaper that appears to have deleted the story. No other coverage of this claim except from Business Insider that copy and pasted this article. Each one has broken links to the original newspaper story. My understanding of thr allegations are that the US policy preferred one large cartel instead of numerous medium sized ones, so the DEA backed off Sinaloa to successfully focus on the smaller cartels, and then turned their attention back to Sinaloa.
L E G A L I Z E
Cartels gone overnight. Handle addiction as a medical problem. With legal MDMA, mushrooms, weed and acid, the hard stuff isn’t going to be anywhere near as big an issue as it is currently.
This is true to a certain degree, but the cartel’s way out of the bag on this one. They don’t just produce/traffic substances, they’re firmly entrenched and armed to the teeth. They are not going anywhere, even if you take one of their major cash cows away - they’d just pivot to something else.
Now, getting MDMA and psychedelics into a therapy setting is something I hope happens very soon, ideally long before anything is fully legalized as I imagine that will be a long time.
I know some people in that industry though in Europe. Legalisation is like game over for them. They move on to other countries.
Seriously what do you imagine they will pivot to that will have even a fraction of the income?
Human trafficking, illegal gambling, protection rackets, prostitution, etc. All of those are “markets” they are already involved in.
Sure. Grimy stuff. But nothing makes money like drugs (maybe gambling). Legalisation would begin their slide down. Legalise prostitution and gambling too like they have in Oz. Makes it safer for all and effectively removes the black market.
I swear it is as simple as 1+1=2. You’re right, this is literally all they would have to do and the cartel would be stuck with Avocadoes and shit. It’s fucking wild dude they would rather it be this way than to legalize drugs and prostitution. However given how the US government has admitted to giving weapons to mexican cartels and the CIA has also admitted to doing secret experiments on US citizens with illegal drugs (and prostitutes were involved too!) And there is some serious evidence that we trafficked crack cocaine into the us during the Reagan years (no open admission on that one AFAIK) I would say it isnt really about trying to solve a problem for the US government, it’s about creating one. A rather profitable one at that. Human beings will never, ever, EVER stop doing drugs or wanting to have sex. Doesnt matter how much religion you throw at it or how hard you put the boot down on someones face or how many years you imprison them or even if you straight up murder them (looking at you Singapore!) People will absolutely never quit doing those things. Drug use has been documented from some of the first humans to ever document anything and will never go away. Many different animals can be observed using intoxicating substances around them. Unfortunately, I don’t think the mindless battle against these things will ever stop either. Quick edit but can you imagine how few rapes their would be if they legalized prostituiton? Can you imagine how fewer deaths their would be if the drug market were regulated and their was zero chance of Fentanyl being in it? They would rather see all of us die before they even considered doing it though.
It’ll be like after prohibition. They will diminish over time, but it will take time. They won’t throw their hands up and say “gosh golly guess we’re all done here”. They will still try the black market, there’s already reports they’re protection racketing legal producers, producing other stuff legal or not but by unsavory means, etc. We should do it but it will take decades for the cartels to diminish.
Maybe in Mexico sure but if the market were regulated and controlled here there would be zero chance that the cartels would be racketeering the legal producers. If they could do that here theyd be doing it already with Oxycontin and Adderall producers. When’s the last time you saw mexican brick weed around? Was it a decade or so ago when they legalized all the weed in US states? Imagine that.
They don’t need to do it with oxycotin or Adderall right now because there is cocaine, meth, still weed, etc. Take it all away and they will do what they need to to survive.
They probably dont even sell their weed in the usa anymore you would be stupid to do that you can just buy it at significantly higher quality in most states and then even if you are in an illegsl state theres still “THCa” flower. They have to sell that shit somewhere else now. And no, they do make fake pills now laced with meth and fentanyl and they kill millions of people. Theres an approximately zero chance that they would ever be able to control legitimate manufacturers in the united states. If they could do that they wouldnt be pushing bullshit pills that kill off most of their customer base. If you legalize and regulate the drug industry suddenly there is no more cocaine and meth and ecstasy because just like regulsting the weed market did it would take the money for the united states market out of their hands they would have to focus on other cpuntries that would also rather deal with criminals rather than regulate and control these things that people will never, ever stop doing completely.
I don’t know if they sell their weed, but they don’t need to because they have other things they can sell. That’s the whole point. Take it all away (see the word all) and they will do what they need to to survive. They’re not going to simply give up on a wealthy market of 350 million people.
Control? It’s not going to be 100% control but that won’t stop them from trying protection racketeering or other things. It will be a fight and they will only go down swinging.
You seem to think in very binary terms of yes or no and can’t see the mess or shades of gray, so cheers.
Avocado!
That doesn’t stop the cartels, not by a long shot. Ending prohibition in the US didn’t eliminate the organized crime families in the US, it just moved them to different areas of corruption. If it’s not alcohol, it’s drugs. If it’s not drugs, then it’s gambling, tax evasion, prostitution, loan sharking, organized theft, and so on and so forth. And without correcting the underlying issues driving alcoholism and drug addiction in the US–particularly poverty–complete decriminalization would lead to huge problems. Has led to huge problems in some cities.
While decriminalizing drugs would help to a degree, you need to correct the underlying problems that have allowed cartels to amass so much power in the first place, like weak governments, lack of opportunities, and high rates of poverty.
Dude it’s 90% of their income - of course it will hit them. They won’t disappear but believe me legalisation is the biggest thing they fear.
All I can do is point to how much power the mob amassed in the US during prohibition, and how long they held that power after prohibition ended. Sure, their revenue took a hit, but they moved fairly smoothly into other areas, and corrupted other power structures in order to build and maintain illicit revenue streams. It wasn’t until the 80s and 90s that the mob families in NYC really saw significant consequences.
As an example? Mozarella cheese on pizza. That was fully controlled by the mob for a long time.
Who cares man? Gambling, prostitution, cheese, trash? Those are legit businesses.
As long they’re out of the murder and dismemberment game that’s the win right?
Gambling should never be considered a legit business. IMO casinos et al. should be shut down, for the same reason that payday lenders should be beaten to death in the streets: they’re fundamentally predatory businesses.
The problem with prostitution and organized crime is that it’s not victimless once the mob gets involved. “Bitch better have my money” is a threat; you pay the pimp, or you get beaten, and possibly killed. You want to hire an independent escort? I’m fine with that. But significant amounts of prostitution involve sex trafficking, esp. “agencies” that constantly advertise “new girls”.
All of the businesses that the mob–or any organized criminal gang–is in end up increasing costs due to corruption, and involve the threat of violence if anyone disrupts their money. People that try to compete in sectors controlled by criminal groups tend to end up dead very, very quickly, regardless of what the nature of the business is.
“Prohibition…goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.” - Abraham Lincoln
I get that you personally might have moral issues with gambling etc. but making something illegal doesn’t stop it, it just pushes control into the hands of criminals. Want to give me a single instance where prohibition has ever worked?
If you want to stop cartels legalisation is literally the only path.
but making something illegal doesn’t stop it,
That’s… Not a good argument. Child pornography and prostitution is illegal because it’s morally reprehensible, and incredibly, profoundly harmful to children. Same with murder, robbery, theft, etc. By definition, anything that is illegal is going to be done–or controlled–only by people that are criminals.
Does prohibition stop those things entirely? No, of course it doesn’t. But it gives society tools to fight against them in a way that decriminalizing does not.
A. Consume less cartel produced drugs.
B. Stop giving the cartels guns
Honestly, we shouldn’t consume drugs at all, but to each their one I always say.
However, I completely agree that the ATF should change their policy and prohibit ALL gun sales without a US identification and simple background check at least.
You’re gonna have a hard time defining “drug” in a way that all people agree with.
Presumably you don’t mean prescription medications, though of course many of them are abused. Does caffeine count? Coffee is linked to many measurable health benefits. What about alcohol? No health benefit and a clear risk of abuse, but there’s also thousands of years of social history, and I think plenty of people would say that, at least sometimes, the benefits of a great night out with friends or meeting new people and developing new relationships is more than worth the cost.
Then you have things like hallucinogens, which generally have only minor health concerns and were mostly criminalized for political reasons. Marijuana is literally a plant, and while the health profile is mixed, at least for some people, it’s without a doubt a net positive. In comparison, and especially relevant to Mexico, there’s heroin, which is incredibly addictive and dangerous while also funneling tons of money into the cartels.
I’m not trying to be pedantic here, but more to make the case that any kind of policy or position on “drugs” as a whole is way too widely scoped. There are too many different substances with drastically different social and medical costs and benefits. Probably no one should ever consume heroin or meth. People with a risk of schizophrenia should absolutely not touch LSD, but people with PTSD may genuinely benefit from MDMA. Alcoholics should never touch alcohol, but your average person having a few drinks on a Friday night out with some friends probably isn’t making a bad decision.
As an aside, and having nothing to do with your thoughts or arguments, I’d like to take a moment to communicate that the common talking points of “it’s a plant” and “it’s natural” regarding marijuana should come with massive asterisks, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is that cocaine and heroin come from plants too. And that there are synthetic THC-related products which aren’t generally distinguished from the actual plant products in such discussions. There are also highly concentrated THC products, such as oils, which are pretty inarguably incomparable to using the plant as it occurs in nature.
So, we can nitpick about maybe banning concentrates and delta-8 and whatnot and maybe only legalize the plant in it’s natural form, right? Well, that brings us to another point: modern marijuana strains have been bred to have a THC content dozens of times higher than what occurs in nature, as well as a dramatically lower relative ratio of CBD (CBD counteracts some of the bad of the THC, by my limited understanding, but that’s outside the scope of this discussion), so calling it “natural” now is more than a bit misleading. It IS a plant, but so are poppies (from which we derive opium/heroin), coca (doesn’t even need processing to get the cocaine), and belladonna (deadly nightshade, from which we derive digoxin), and, well, nobody here is arguing that those are safe to consume on the basis of their being or deriving from plants.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
The only thing that matters is that (in adults) it’s very clearly demonstrated by abundant research to be perfectly harmless.
In and of itself, the lack of harm makes it impossible for you to be a redeemable human being if you want to tell a consenting adult that they can’t have it.
That’s ignoring all the evidence supporting benefits.
Perfectly harmless is overstating the case. It is undoubtedly much less harmful than alcohol, but there are still some detrimental effects.
Of course, there are also significant, much more so, detrimental effects to soda and to sitting down. There’s a level of risk for which society has solidly decided that the choice is up to the individual, and marijuana undoubtedly should be in that category, but we shouldn’t pretend that there are literally zero negative effects.
It’s not. There’s no evidence for any harm of any kind from THC or the other psychoactive ingredients in adults.
Smoking, specifically, yes, but there are many, many other ways to ingest it, and smoking is most common in large part because of the backwards ass laws.
It’s not like alcohol, where the desired altered state is exchanged for fucking up your liver, kidneys, etc. It doesn’t do any of that, even with extremely heavy use.
The relevant ones are the ones cartels make money trafficking or producing: opiates, cocaine and meth.
Stop taking drugs?
Smart, effective gun control in the US?
So, we theoretically could stop cartels, but never, ever will.
Decriminalize the use of currently illegal drugs, and increase penalties for the dealing of illegal drugs. Then increase funding for the medical treatment of addiction. And homelessness. And food insecurity. Too bad none of that will ever happen, since our stupid government prefers to solve all of its problems with cruise missiles.
Snort less coke, mainly.
Demand will never wane. It is human nature. It’s like yelling really loud “stop being hungry humans!” (well kinda, hunger is not a good analogy but the opinion is that drugs are a fundamental flaw with our human design. Just asking to stop does not work. Also, jailing those who do doesn’t help any either.
The attack has to be financial. Outsell them. Legalize, tax and monitor. Make it a health concern not a law breaking issue. If it is no longer profitable to export, cartels will hurt and weaken and that is how this very powerful organizations are taken down. Take their money away.
I remember Mexico pleading for US to legalize marijuana. Mexico did but cartels still had the massive American market.
The obvious answer: Start producing locally
So, how do we do it? Do we straight up invade Mexico and go on a full out war against the cartels like we did against Osama Bin Laden?
That sure went well, huh? Afghanistan sure is a better place now! Oh, wait…
Cartels don’t care about drugs, they care about making money.
From what I understand, the US is actively investing in the Mexican economy right now in order to both shift our manufacturing reliability away from China and also to provide economic stability in Mexico to shift power away from the cartels. Please take this with a grain of salt as I do not remember where I read this and cannot provide a source. But from what I recall, the long term plan is to setup manufacturing in Mexico for the above reasons with the bonus of reducing shipping costs, time, and shipment vulnerability. I really hope it works, because if you think about it, it just makes sense all around. If we make Mexico our biggest trade partner, we both benefit in big ways. And the more options people have in Mexico for jobs, the less they have to rely on the cartel.
Aside from that, I used to agree that legalizing drugs would take the market away from the cartels, but then you have to remember that the cartels have since diversified. So stop eating Haas avocados??? I don’t know, I’m just a graphic designer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s exactly true, I can only imagine it isn’t widely published because the GOP would rather rant and rave about TEH IMMAGRINTS!! and take any opportunity to say the government isn’t making things better. Meanwhile, a Republican President (you know which one) would rather sell even more production to China with no checks whatsover in exchange for a very cheap bribe.
I think what kick-started this was all the tariffs that were implemented under the Trump administration. It led corporations to move their manufacturing to other countries and in the process, it was generally discovered to work best to move manufacturing to Mexico. Now under Biden, they are trying to actively encourage moving things from China to Mexico.
BUT THE WALL!!
Universal healthcare in the US if breaking bad is right.
While it’s true that the U.S. is the most convenient market for Mexican cartels, it’s worth knowing that it’s far from the only one. Mexican drug cartels have major connections to markets across the globe. and that Mexico specifically is the de facto administrator of drug trade in the western world. For example, a drug bust in India found fentanyl that had been purchased in Mexico from China. . That’s not the sort of arrangement that the US can ever hope to do away with through domestic legislation without undermining the autonomy of dozens of states around the globe.
While removing the cartels’ access to the American market via decriminalization would certainly take away a lot of funds, let’s not act like black market operations don’t exist in legal markets anyway.
In this hypothetical situation where the US is responsible for Mexico’s drug cartel problem (which I disagree with), I don’t think the road to success ends at the US legalizing drugs.
The US is the key source from war on drugs legislation and still a major fighter against efforts to decriminalize and legalize drugs. If it would change its attitude, it would open up political space for other countries that typically follow suit to the US. Also it would serve as evidence that legalisation with good regulation is better than criminalisation.
This is true, another example is Ecuador who is fighting an incredible surge in gang violence because the Mexican cartels are now operating in the south American country.
When there’s a clean supply of drugs green-lit by a superpower like the US, wouldn’t it naturally be exported to other countries? Sure, the cartel would still exist, but for the drug trade specifically, better availability of safe, quality drugs internationally would reduce international demand for cartel drugs, no? Wouldn’t other countries start manufacturing said drugs to import into the US as well, making it easier to fill the black market with regulated products?
“do we straight up invade… like we did…” Do you know the mess that actually comes from there? And How much it had enforced extremist behaviour in other countries.
“What US needs to do?” Start by taking care of your own issues like guns, they will inevitably end up in dark market serving cartels and others, it would also stop massive killing happening in your own country at the same time… Priorities to education and healthcare, Stop invading countries (can’t remember last US invasion which was actually useful…), start supporting smart guys instead of bad/extremist guys so they don’t get more powerful (exemple: Masoud instead of Bin Laden in Afghanistan against Russia).
Had to scroll way to long to find this. Funny to see how Americans think imperialism is a solution.
« Best way to help Mexico ?» stop capitalism and switch to a social system.
Legalize drugs, stop the war on drugs from Nixon era. It should be treated as a health problem, not a criminal one, and once they’re at least decriminalized the cartel’s profits would PLUMMET.
Ofc USA has probably the strongest propaganda system and has incentive for the cartels to continue existing, so I don’t see that happening unless some change that’s major and unexpected happens.
The US could stop buying the drugs or stop supplying the weapons. The CIA was heavily involved in the creation of the cartely so the US should stay the fuck out of it. Whenever you try to fix stuff you make it worse. Mostly because you only act like you try to fix it while at the same time looking how to profit from it.
